Sessions at SXSW Interactive 2012 on Tuesday 13th March in Driskill Hotel

Founders can plan all they want, but sometimes the most significant drivers of growth are unexpected. The trick to sniffing out the (unexpected) secret sauce is observing trends—both among users and throughout the greater tech community—and just having been there. Eventbrite CEO and Co-Founder Kevin Hartz will discuss how, with a keen pair of eyes, and a strong sense of company values, Eventbrite capitalized on momentum in social media integration, mobile proliferation, and big data capabilities, to help the company grow into a ticketing and registration platform that has already issued over 50 million tickets.

With the developments in social shopping such as real time social shopping sites, Facebook shopping, and location-based check-ins, recommendations, and deals, the fashion industry is catering to the customer like never before. But how social can—and should—shopping get? While consumers may want to consume together, over-sharing of information is all too easy. Apple’s Ping, Facebook’s Beacon and Blippy are but three familiar examples.This core conversation will discuss how privacy fits in and explores the question of just who is safe guarding the community.

The traditional cycles of fashion trends, consumer buying patterns and clothing manufacturing no longer exist in the fashion industry – fashion is ‘now’ in all its capacity and its current pace brings with it a variety of side effects. A traditional fashion cycle refers to the processes of adoption and rejection of a particular trend/activity etc. We will discuss how this definition has evolved in the today’s fashion digital era. We will investigate how digital and technological developments have affected today’s fashion industry from a media, consumer and retail perspective. We will assess the growing importance of social gaming and community to the fashion industry. We will examine social shopping, instant gratification and the saturated world of fashion information and moving trends. In conclusion, we will discuss whether we will be able to sustain the current consumption of information and flow of material and how best to operate in this new world.

The merging of the physical and digital into a blended reality is a profound change to our world that demands examination. In this session we will explore this concept through the lenses of technology, anthropology and cyberculture. We will debate the ideas of PolySocial Reality, which describes our multiple, multiplexed, synchronous and ansynchronous data connections; Augmented Reality; and the Enspirited World of people, places and things suffused with digital information energy.

In 2015, analysts estimate worldwide sales of 3 million hybrid and electric cars and light trucks – and almost 100 million electric scooters and bikes. EVs represent more than just a different way to turn the wheels on the family car – they are a wholesale re-thinking of consumer mobility, introducing cars that have as much in common with your smartphone and your laptop as they do with the car in your garage right now. Questions are inevitable, of course. How should an electric car behave? How should manufacturers prepare consumers for the differences in owning, driving and maintaining it? What responsibilities should marketers and product managers take on to help this market take off? And will the EV “cool factor” taper off or continue to grow? Whatever the answers to these questions, it is clear that the electric vehicle will be a connected vehicle. And that mobile, social, and local technologies will be key to shaping vehicles as they move from prototype to production. Join Mike O’Toole, PJA President and host of PJA Radio, for a provocative discussion that gets to the heart of the probable and probes the limits of the possible. Mike will be joined by Robert Davis, PJA’s SVP for Digital Marketing and Matt Magee, VP of Digital Strategy, and guests from Ford, GM and other players out to “make the EV market” will share their opinions and insights as well.

Digital democracy has been and gone; at the end of the day, we only want fashion that looks good. Which is, for the most part, highly produced, edited and featuring a well-known model. Fashion social media has had quite a journey so far, whether in the form of the legion of DIY self-promoters on Lookbook and Chictopia, the impromptu crafts community sprung up around Etsy, or the big-name designers putting in their time on Twitter. But we say Karl can leave his glasses on, and even stay away from Twitter. Exclusivity remains key. The future is not in democratizing fashion media online, but in leveraging this audience and arranging it into tiers; idle browser, brand ambassador, fashion insider or member of the Front Row upper echelon.

Geo-tagging for time spent in store. The option of recording a wardrobe and sharing its contents. Celebrity curators, catwalk live streams and behind-the-scenes insight. A new incarnation of the badge system used in fashion blogging. Without turning shopping into a competitive sport, we want to see shoppers prove their loyalty, and we want to see designers offer something in return. A brand's Facebook page risks becoming little more than an HR department; how we can find ways to make it more glamorous?

Writer of the award-winning blog, Cupcakes and Cashmere (and soon-to-be-published book under the same name), Emily Schuman shares how she got her start in blogging and how she turned it into a successful business. She explores the steps she took to building a trusted voice, creating a connection with her audience, establishing valuable partnerships, and how she inspires through authenticity.

Panel in the The Driskill's Citadel Room to be followed by a meet up at The Driskill Bar downstairs...

A new generation of social curation communities have risen over the past year with the mission of enhancing shopping and product discovery across retailers. These services provide an easy way to create wish lists and curate styles. Soon we will see shoppers, retailers, brands, media outlets and blogs joining these services to curate photography, new products and news stories. We will explore how social curation is currently being used and its future impact on the taste graph.